Draco and Harry's Illicit Affair
by Veterization
Summary: ...and how Blaise Zabini wants nothing to do with it. Blaise has the luck to stumble upon his friend romping around in Potter's pants. Multiple times. Post-war, return to seventh year, Draco/Harry oneshot.


_Disclaimer_: I do not own Harry Potter.

**Draco and Harry's Illicit Affair (and how Blaise Zabini wants nothing to do with it)**

O O O O O

Blaise follows Draco's sixteenth poorly concealed wandering gaze of the morning, eyes landing once more on Harry Potter scrabbling over the bacon platter with the Weasley.

This is hardly suspicious, and Blaise would normally try to steal a freshly buttered piece of toast out from Draco's platter to cease the distraction that glowering heatedly at an oblivious Potter provides, except that the default glower of loathing is mysteriously missing.

It's a curious, hardly well hidden stare under the hood of Draco's lashes, laced with an undercurrent of longing akin to the look Blaise frequently sees Goyle shoot at treacle tart. Blaise, who has never seen Draco noticeably yearn toward anything other than the opportunity to ridicule the Gryffindors, is starting to speculate.

"What's up with Potter, Draco?" Blaise prompts, cocking his head to where the bespectacled boy is now busy uplifting his tipped over goblet of pumpkin juice thanks to Weasley's energetic owl whirring around their plates. Under closer inspection, Potter is not suffering from an outbreak of humiliating pimples or boils, sporting a toothless smile, or any other superficial feature worthy of embarrassment that might merit Draco leering at him in satisfaction.

"What?" Draco asks, eyes snapping to Blaise's as if caught with his hand in the cookie jar before dinnertime.

"You. Looking at Potter all morning. What's up?"

Pansy stares at the Gryffindor table in a premature snigger, examining Potter and his friends for horrendous hairstyles or a lack of ears. When she finds nothing deserving any pointing or giggling, the sniggering stops abruptly and she shoots Draco an accusatory glare, who glowers straight back.

"Don't look at me like that, Pansy, I didn't tell you to look," Draco snarls, aggressively smearing butter over his toast before turning to Blaise and bristling, "And I wasn't looking at anyone, Blaise."

"Hmm," Blaise murmurs, earning him another acid scowl from the blond beside him.

"You know I hate it when you _hmmm_, Blaise."

"Hmmm," he says again, unnecessarily, slipping his fork into his mouth and watching Draco abandon his toast and stuff his Potions textbook into his bag with unwarranted brutality.

"Whatever. I'll see you in class," Draco says, shooting Blaise a dirty look that clearly accuses him of ruining his halcyon breakfast with fresh toast, before rocketing out of his seat and striding out of the Great Hall with a huffy exhale and his nose poised skyward. Pansy tries scurrying after him to no avail, Draco's legs fixedly carrying him down the hall to the corridor without a single glance back.

Goyle, his face still buried in his dish of eggs, perks up at the sight of Draco storming from the table. Theo squirms in the seat next to him, looking quite uncomfortable in the aftermaths of Draco's loitering irritation, while Pansy returns with a huff of resignation and slumps back into her chair.

Blaise, meanwhile, casts his eyes back to the Gryffindor table, where Potter's gaze is subtly following the blond Slytherin thundering out the door.

Blaise Zabini, really, is not stupid.

O O O O O

The Breakfast Incident, as Blaise now mentally refers to it as, has honed the precision of his observation skills and caused him to reevaluate what he's written off as Draco Malfoy being the grating enigma he is.

One example that fits into this category of paying closer attention to seemingly innocuous instances is watching Draco partnering up with Potter in Potions and working together almost seamlessly.

In the past, when Snape would purposefully pair Potter up with Draco to ensure maximum agony and suffering, Draco would roar with laughter at his table as he would shove all the faults of the potion effortlessly onto Potter's lap and beam in glee when Snape would promptly punish the Gryffindor without a single admonishment to push onto Draco. He would provoke, tease, and snigger in Potter's ears for the entire lesson while Potter would grit his teeth and brush off all of the sympathetic glances Granger and Weasley would send him from sundry other parts of the classroom.

Now, the roars of smug laughter are mysteriously no longer ringing through the echoing walls of the dungeon.

Blaise supposes it might be Slughorn's presence, whose idolization of Harry often puts Draco's attempt to humiliate and needle Potter into a tantrum and ultimate trouble into check, but lately, things have been decidedly different.

Blaise works away at crushing the scarab beetles assembled on the cutting board in front of him while keeping a tactful eye spying ahead at the sleek tuft of blond hair sitting adjacent to a mop of thoroughly disheveled black hair. Blaise straightens up his spine and stares over Theo's mousy head bustling in front of him with hands full of armadillo bile.

"Zabini," Granger's soft voice says next to him, her potions book propped up against the jar of beetles, "don't you think that's enough crushing?"

Blaise looks down at his vigorously trodden beetles piled together in a heap of brown muck, muttering an apology to his partner before returning his gaze to the boys working together in front of him.

He remembers the days when Blaise sent nasty looks at anyone with a red scarf and a Gryffindor grin for the principle of being a proud Slytherin, how he and Draco would chortle at how silly Potter's hair, constantly in disarray, seemed to be, and how they sprang on every possible opportunity to guffaw at Potter's choice in friends and favorite teachers. Those days, it seems, have died a cruel murder along with the war.

Blaise lets out an audible sigh as he sweeps his the remains of his beetles into the cauldron. He misses the days when all of Slytherin house verbally abhorred Potter and made it clear to his face on a daily basis. Draco was easier to understand back then.

Blaise, eyes aloft, almost drops the ginger root Granger has dumped into his palms onto his shoes when he spies Potter leaning into Draco's personal space to whisper something into his ear. Draco's poorly suppressed laughter at his hushed words is sickening enough to cause Lucius to die an early death even miles away in Malfoy Manor.

Blaise deflates a little at the sound of Draco's snickering at whatever sugary thing Potter must've whispered into his ear. Briefly, he muses if Potter's hair is looking messier than usual because of Draco's wandering hands stuck in the locks of his hair during a potential morning molestation session in the boys' bathroom.

"Sir, I think Potter's lethally ruined our potion," Draco's drawl calls out over the noisy hiss of Longbottom's potion as Slughorn lumbers over to the desk to examine the state of their brew.

Blaise watches as Draco and Potter whisper furiously to each other, supposedly in the middle of a heated row over who made the grievous error concerning their potion until both of them break out in reluctant smiles, Draco's being more of a smug smirk. The Slytherin's hand seems to be trailing down underneath the desk to a forbidden journey involving stroking Potter's thigh, when Slughorn's booming chuckles break apart their private discussion.

"_Merlin_," Blaise breathes into the cauldron, stirring rhythmically while Granger mumbles the instructions to herself on repeat. He casts her a look. He wonders, vaguely, if Potter's friends are having the same epiphanies as he is. Granger is praised frequently by teachers and students alike about how sharp her intelligence and analysis skills are. Weasley, even though he's not nearly as bright as his Gryffindor friends have proven themselves to be, spends almost every waking moment with his best friend and surely should notice his sudden disappearances with Malfoy and lack of interest in his sister.

"Granger," Blaise says to the girl frantically flipping pages in her textbook beside him, "does Potter seem different to you lately?"

She perks up from her reading, "Different?"

"Perhaps distracted," Blaise hints, before throwing caution and tact to the wind and using blatant honesty as his new plan, "less spiteful toward Slytherins?"

"The war's over," she tells him slowly, as if he's missed this certain bit of recent history, "of course he's different."

She turns back to her work of crushing more beetles properly after Blaise mangled his own attempt. Blaise lets out a sigh, sets his jaw, and peers once more at the mismatched couple exchanging what they must believe to be inconspicuous glances of suggestion. Knowing Draco's mind, Blaise hopes his friend hasn't mentally conjured a fantasy in which he and Potter exchange blowjobs in the potions storeroom pressed up against jars of gillyweed.

_Really_, Blaise thinks, resisting the urge to hurl his flobberworm bits at the back of their heads as Potter's foot hooks over Draco's ankle, _how stupid do you think everyone is?_

O O O O O

After a lengthy mental battle Blaise has with his own mind where he considers confronting Draco over any illicit love affairs he may or may not be partaking in with certain green-eyed Gryffindors, Draco comes to the firm conclusion that this situation should be left untouched.

He's a little irked that Draco hasn't already come to him with this bit of information regarding his love life. He wonders if Draco is possibly under the belief that Blaise is as thick-headed as Goyle and lacks the examination skills to detect a relationship in the works between Draco and Potter, as if his jealousy for Blaise's sharp acumen is deterring him from believing it exists. However, Blaise suspects that the true culprit is Draco's shame, for it's a nasty monster that seems to rear its ugly head at least once every year and loom over Draco's head like a dark cloud until he gives in, erupts in a brilliantly loud tantrum in the Slytherin common room, and shuts himself into the bathroom through an entire Charms period to summon up all the dredges of pity in his stomach for himself and fret over what his father would think about his cowardice or other inane flaw he harbors.

Fancying a Gryffindor –– Potter, no less –– is definitely one of the few circumstances that merits an explosion of guilt inside Draco's mind. After years of snide comments, offensive remarks, and bitter revenge sought out to return the rejection Potter inflicted upon him in the train in first year when Draco graciously offered his friendship only to feel the sting of a dismissal, finding concealed vestiges of a silly childhood crush for his nemesis is enough to barrel Draco over the edge of the Astronomy Tower in dishonor to the Malfoy name and Slytherin conceit alone.

Still, Blaise thinks with a faint frown, shame or not, as Draco's closest friend who understands words that exceed three syllables and doesn't shriek obnoxiously at every one of his more commonplace jokes just to placate and amuse him, he believes he deserves to know if Draco's been gallivanting off with Potter to romp around in his pants.

His indignation, however, is short-lived. When Draco continues blatantly staring at the Gryffindor table from the rim of his goblet and murmuring with him in a fashion much too civil during classes the Slytherins share with Potter, Blaise decides to turn a blind eye to the blatant lack of trust Draco possesses for his friend and to the secret liaison he's formed with the Chosen One. After all, if Blaise is about to start preaching about true friendship like a Hufflepuff, he better become one and simply wait for Draco to confess the secret of his newfound lust for Harry Potter on his own watch.

Up until he walks in on them necking in the Slytherin common room. Possibly.

He's just finished a lazy evening reading up on trolls and their influence in the Wizarding World for an essay Professor Binns assigned a few days prior in the library when Blaise strolls through the Slytherin common room entrance in the mood for a wank in the shower and a night of early rest if Theo or Draco isn't up for a few rounds of chess and finds half of Draco's body wriggling on the couch.

Blaise's first instinct is to whip out his wand and start firing spells, except he's not entirely sure if he should be planting curses or lifting them. Draco's legs, splayed over the majority of the couch in rather rumpled trousers, are all that's left of his body. Blaise's eyes run up his thighs, in horror, to see that his torso has mysteriously vanished into thin air and that Draco's legs seem to be writhing about on the cushions on their own accord despite their missing upper half.

"Draco!" says Blaise to the legs, wondering if they have managed to secure a power of hearing and speaking if they've managed to roam about on their lonesome, "Merlin, Draco, what have you done?"

The answer, however, is not a cry for help or a sigh of relief that an aid in the form of a friend has arrived. Instead, there is an urgent set of matching gasps of alarm and the distinct sound of frenetic rustling, and as if half of Draco's body has never been separated from its remaining limbs, Draco abruptly appears on the couch in front of him, somewhere in between mortification and annoyance.

Blaise blinks, and blinks again, desperately wishing someone else was beside him to point and holler at what they had just witnessed to confirm the sight that Blaise has beheld. Blaise blinks one more time for good measure, fully expecting to be met with a lone limb or Draco's disembodied head bobbing around the room, only to be met with the same sight of Draco shifting on the couch with extremely flushed cheeks.

Extremely flushed cheeks? Blaise peers at him, instantly noticing astonishingly untidy strands of blond hair falling into Draco's forehead rather than silkily arranged to perfection, swollen lips, and extremely wrinkled robes.

Almost instantly, Blaise feels the blood plummeting to his feet to ooze out of his shoes. Draco's been snogging. _Snogging_. The only negative aspect of this deduction is that it still doesn't explain the enigma that is Draco's ability to disappear appendages of his body on command, or the fact that Potter is nowhere to be found, putting a rather hefty dent in the theory Blaise has been fabricating for a few weeks concerning Potter and Draco's lusty encounters behind suits of armor in the corridors between classes.

"What's going on?" he demands, watching as Draco struggles to compose his effectively bedraggled appearance.

"Nothing," snaps Draco, smoothing his hair behind his ear, "just been sitting here. Honestly, Blaise, you're going around the twist."

Behind Draco, a cushion shifts on its own accord. Draco shoots the cushion a malicious glower, eyes flashing akin to how McGonagall chastises a pair of students out after bed to knick firewhiskey from the kitchens, and swiftly resumes his task of brushing the creases out of his robes.

"Draco, your legs were on the couch. Just your legs. What in Salazar's––"

"Honestly!" Draco interrupts hotly, curling his lip, "I said it was nothing, Blaise, you must've just eaten something funny at dinner."

"I highly doubt––"

"Theo was feeling queasy earlier too. I sent him to the hospital wing. You can chat with him there."

Blaise scowls at him when he notices his highly obvious and quite Slytherin-esque attempt to slither him out of the common room and out of sight, conveniently pulling a halt to the torrent of questions Blaise is prepared to launch into that, from his grim expression alone, Blaise knows Draco is surely not ready to answer.

Instead, he turns his gaze to the couch beside him. It's seemingly empty, with the exception of the bewitched pillow that manages a twitch or a ruffle in wrinkles every now and then when Blaise watches it. He wonders if for once, this has nothing to do with Potter, and if Draco is actually involved in a dark branch of magic involving invisible creatures capable of inflicting nefarious pain when recognized. Blaise rids his mind of this absurd idea when he watches Draco shoot the cushion another glare. The pillow swiftly stops moving yet again.

"What've you got there?" Blaise asks as innocently as his tone can manage to attempt to quell some of the noticeable distress Draco is attempting to rid his body of with a profuse run of his fingertips through the roots of his hair, only mussing it up further to the point where he resembles a student who just had a wank in a broom cupboard during lunch.

"Nothing," Draco says automatically, like a reflex born after years of expertly hiding things from his mother's watchful eyes, and challenges Blaise to question him further.

For a moment, there is silence except for the glare the two Slytherins send each other, in which Blaise tries summoning up his best tries at Legimency to feel through the nonexistent telepathic link grown though a bond of friendship formed between the two of them and Draco tries to scare the boy away with a fierce glare rivaling only his father's. When neither relents, Draco huffs in impatience and rearranges his robes.

"Well, if you're done, _I'm_going to bed," he shoots one last look at the green pillow lying innocently in the corner of the sofa. Blaise watches it too, as if waiting for it to jump up from its lifeless position and bounce up the stairs after Draco to the boys' dormitory. Blaise almost believes that he's predicted the situation correctly when the pillow gives yet another jerk, but then the couch gives out a wheeze and a creak of age and the hardly audible sound of rustling fabric meets his ears again.

"Is that a––" Blaise finally finds the sense to ask, eyes slipping out of their narrowed glare to widen in shock. His fingers are two inches away from coming into contact with what is most definitely the silky substance of an Invisibility Cloak when Draco swiftly steps in front of him and ushers him out of the way.

"I'm awfully tired," he says firmly, and grazes past him.

Blaise frowns as the unmistakable sound of a body tripping up the stairs of the boys' dormitory and Draco's low hissing of reprimand hits his ears. He stares at the couch and hopes, desperately hopes, that he interrupted Draco and Potter's impious escapade on the couch in time to save the purity of the cushions from a load of bodily fluids.

O O O O O

The Slytherin Quidditch team, despite being quite menacing in terms of appearance and sneering and even talented when they're not busy almost falling off their brooms guffawing at Weasley's serious attempt to play Keeper, are on a pitiful losing streak.

However, in a manner that only Slytherin house could manage, they celebrate their losses akin to how Gryffindor celebrates their wins: getting hangover-worthy, drinking-the-common-room-dry drunk.

Blaise is currently draped over the only remaining vacant armchair he managed to snag before the inebriated youngsters started falling headfirst into the armrests, watching the pandemonium begin as Daphne Greengrass starts announcing a Veritarserum-induced game of Truth or Dare and a few anxious third years scurry to take part in the amusement.

Blaise seems to be the only person not already singing off of the fumes of alcohol wafting around the common room with the strength of the pungent odor of dungbombs. He searches for Draco, who surely should be off in a corner trying to keep Pansy's inebriated attempts of flirtation at bay with Stinging Hexes while sulking about the ineptness of his Quidditch teammates. Draco has always taken Quidditch seriously to the point that when Potter got accepted to the team even when he was in his first year, he shut himself away in the Owlery for days while waiting for his father to write back with hopefully reaffirming news that he could manage to remove Potter from his Seeker position.

Blaise scans the room for a sight of a despondent mop of blond hair moodily declining any attempts from somebody to intoxicate him with fresh bottles of butterbeer. In the corner, Theo is being assaulted with Pansy's tongue as she clambers into his lap with the help of one hand while the other steadies her bottle of firewhiskey. By the couches, Goyle is watching, transfixed, as a fifth year girl toys with her wand and causes flames of the fire to jump and dance along to an imaginary tune. Draco remains mysteriously absent.

Disentangling himself from the comfort of the armchair, Blaise saunters over to where Theo is now trying helplessly to push away a giggling Pansy who has her tongue trailing the shell of his ear.

"Theo," Blaise prompts to a Theo with eyes as wide as tree trunks as Pansy slithers her hand underneath his robes and seizes his thigh, all the while whimpering, "Oh, _Dracoooo_," onto the line of his jaw.

"Blaise," gasps Theo, attempting once more to straggle himself out of the chair and Pansy's clutches as her manicured nails start roaming over his chest, "a little help here?"

"Actually wanted to ask you if you've seen Draco."

"Still in the Quidditch –– aaaargh, Pansy, stop _biting_–– changing rooms," he says, looking relatively bothered that Blaise isn't aiding him in his valiant effort to pry Pansy off of his body and escort her back to her own bed where she can sleep off the effects of whatever pints mystery liquor she's consumed in the past hour.

"What's he still doing in there? The game ended ages ago."

Theo shrugs. Pansy lets out an R-rated moan and wraps herself around Theo like a spider spinning its web around a victimized fly. Blaise has enough pity to send him a mollifying glance before grabbing his cloak and heading for the corridor.

He's traipsing through the mud sloshing around the hem of his robes, head bowed against the drizzle that graced the stands throughout the entire Quidditch game, wondering if Theo had purposefully nicked Draco's clothes from the locker room just so he could undergo the hormonal wonder that was Pansy Parkinson with a bottle of hard alcohol swinging from her fingers. He also briefly entertains the idea of Draco offing himself in the stream of the showerhead to avoid the agony of the atmosphere of defeat following Draco like a dementor for at least a week after the game's completion, before deciding that Malfoys, as a general rule, are too classy to commit suicide in bathrooms.

He pushes open the door to the changing rooms, and a second later, knows that he should have stayed upstairs in the beautiful bliss that is tipsy Slytherins.

The stench of mud, dirt, ruddy brooms, and one that is completely foreign to the Quidditch changing rooms, sex, assaults his senses. It's rancid, filthy, and enough to make Blaise want to plug his nose and order house elves down here with rags and mops until the place gleams. Filch, it seems, from the look of the grime developing in the corners of the floor tiles, has given up on polishing this particular region of Hogwarts.

Blaise's robes, sopping at the hem as the rainwater squeezes off the threads, leaves an ominous _drip drip drip_on the tiles after him.

_Leave now!_the splashes of water screech at him. Blaise ignores them, channeling his inner Gryffindor, all the while keeping his eyes sharp for Draco's platinum hair strutting about the place. He takes another two steps in when he reaches the showers and considers starting to call for Draco's name to order him to swallow his pride, take Gryffindor's win in stride, and get sloshed like his friends. In the back of his mind, Blaise imagines Goyle blubbering on the couch and Daphne cackling with glee as more students wired with Truth Serum start spilling their most outrageous secrets.

Blaise rounds the corner, and just like that, any lingering thoughts of whatever tomfoolery is happening in the dungeons flees from his mind in horror.

On broad display right in front of him is more of Draco Malfoy's arse than he ever wanted to behold with his eyes in his entire life.

Draco's bent on his knees, fingers rubbing circles into a very naked Potter's hipbones, head dipped down past the sharp V of his hips to nuzzle right at Potter's crotch, thick head of blond hair thankfully shrouding any details of Potter's prick that would have scarred Blaise's already haunted mind to the point of no return. They're both wet and dripping, snuggled into the crook of the nearest shower after what was clearly the aftermath of a wash that polluted their bodies more than it managed to cleanse, Potter's forehead plastered with damp strands of unruly black hair and head tipped back to find purchase on the wall behind him, mouth agape and glistening.

A soft, practically pornographic moan fills the air as Draco squeezes Potter's hips and seems to increase the tempo of his already extremely pleasing blowjob, if the expression of pure ecstasy etched on Potter's face as his eyes flutter fully closed is anything to conclude from.

It is possibly the most degrading thing Blaise has ever seen, to witness a boy who used to take joy in besmirching any Gryffindor's status to the collapse and catastrophe on his knees like a common house elf to suck off the Boy-Who-Lived, the same boy who also managed to single-handedly annihilate the darkest wizard of the century who claimed his title as Draco's boss with a disarming spell.

Blaise muses how this scenario would go differently if he had dragged Theo or Pansy down with him to investigate Draco's disappearance. Here he is, the epitome of tranquility and perfect composure even upon the sight of Draco's mouth full of Potter's dick. He thanks his mother for always managing to bring various aroused men back to her bed whenever Blaise was around to walk in on her hasty attempts to redress her nude form in front of the enlarged eyes of her son for his blasé reaction to sex. Pansy, he imagines, would be bawling and crumpling to the floor by now in unabashed tears about the brutal destruction of her fantasies in which her and Draco would find their mutual adoration for each other in a snowstorm during Christmastime. Theo would be frozen in the dread of seeing a boy's dick that wasn't his own alone.

From somewhere around Potter's groin, Blaise hears Draco starting to hum, eliciting another whimper from Potter's mouth, now busy trapping his lower lip between his teeth. Blaise takes it as his cue to leave.

He supposes that Draco could be with the Slytherins getting plastered off of drinking games, or he could be on his knees in the changing rooms with Potter groaning at his mercy. Either way, he's drinking something.

O O O O O

Blaise is starting to wonder why it's always _him_.

Goyle had whined about needing the bathroom no less than ten minutes after Charms started. Draco had asked him if he fancied a piss right after breakfast. Blaise Zabini, however, always impeccable with his timing, strolled to the bathroom just in time to overhear a hushed conversation wafting out from a stall after Transfiguration.

"You're so…" a quiet, breathless voice wafts over to the sinks seconds before Blaise's fingers reach to turn on the tap, "I love… when you come."

"That's sweet, Potter," drawls the unmistakable hiss of Draco. Blaise shouldn't be surprised anymore when he runs into the two of them. It's all he does nowadays, whether or not Potter is wearing pants. Blaise casts a glare at his own reflection, hoping to find some solace in his own eyes as he braces himself on the rim. He supposes he could make an enormous racket, lure Moaning Myrtle out of the nearest toilet, and yank on all of the taps until there would be the telltale sound of Potter falling onto the rim of a toilet in surprise while Draco shushes him and tries his hardest to slip from the stall with a demeanor of rehearsed nonchalance. Deciding he's not in the mood to listen to Potter bang around in the stall and for Draco to start roaring irrelevant excuses at Blaise when he questions his lingering presence in the boys' bathroom, he remains wordless by the sinks.

"Shut up, Malfoy," says Potter, muffled through the stall door.

"Make me."

Blaise resists the urge to roll his eyes. He can feel the smirk in Draco's words, and is about to mentally berate his friend's unoriginal pick-up tactics when he identifies the clear smack of lips on lips. Blaise wrinkles his nose; of all people, he had thought that the Boy-Who-Lived wouldn't be so easily pleased by Draco's mundane humor.

The kissing, clearly very wet and thorough kissing, ends only after Potter lets out a stifled whimper and seemingly manages to wrestle himself away from Draco's touch before his voice rings out again against the bathroom tile.

"Have you thought more about…" he trails off, withering, "…y'know. Telling?"

The tension, despite the lack of being able to watch Draco's face for a visible reaction, is thick even to Blaise. He wonders if their relationship is always like this, where one of them pushes the other to the brink of a useless squabble which leads to childish bickering similar to the altercations they would get into years ago but lacking the heat and violence, which ultimately ends in a peaking of sexual tension that results in a very hasty tumble towards the nearest sheet –– or sometimes, Blaise supposes, bathroom stall –– and the discharging of a generous portion of pent-up thirst for each other's touch.

"No," says Draco, "I haven't been thinking about it. And I won't, Potter. The idea of mother's owl awaiting me in the aftermaths is enough to make up my mind," and then, as a slightly desperate addition, "it's a frightening owl. Enormous."

"For Merlin's sake, Malfoy," Harry says, voice steadily ascending in volume, "we never get anywhere."

"I don't know what you're expecting, Potter," Draco hisses, back to enunciating the _P_like he's speaking of a rancid carton of expired milk, "I'm not going to run off to get a great, gay wedding and then adopt dogs wearing matching sweaters that the Weasley's peasant mother can knit."

"Don't talk about––"

"Merlin, Potter, just shut your sodding mouth. It's useless when it's not wrapped around my dick anyway."

There's another long, pregnant, almost cumbersome silence in which Blaise's mind's eye provides a flawless X-ray image of what's occurring behind the door obscuring his view; Potter is backed up against the toilet wearing an expression of shock intermingled with feebly hidden hurt, as if expecting that the Slytherin, defensive side of Draco had somehow been weeded out of him and drained away after the war, all the while staring at a Draco who is busy fixedly addressing the grime on the toilet rim instead of meeting Harry's eyes, sneer in place and offensive comments shooting from his brain to the tip of his tongue, where Draco's logic kicks in to advise him to swallow all of these snide remarks back to the musty corners of his mind where they belong.

Blaise, who despite his blatant Slytherin tendencies, is remarkably brainier when it comes to lover's quarrels and deals with them much more elegantly, a skill that he possesses instead of Draco mostly because Draco's vigorously swollen ego constantly plays a very large blockage to the journey leading to his common sense and courtesy. He knows what to do in a situation like this.

Blaise doesn't exactly like Harry Potter. He's not daft enough to believe whatever headline-grabbing lies and fibs the Prophet prints about the boy anymore, but as his classmate for over seven years, Blaise firmly believes that he understands aspects of Potter that newspapers don't grasp. Through watching him scrabble to create adequate brews under Snape's mentoring even though he always fails in the task and paling in comparison of wits to his far sharper friend Granger, Blaise has surmised that Harry Potter, although special in a very notorious way, is hardly spectacular. He's not the brightest, not always the nicest if the rumor of his impromptu tantrums and visions of the future during fifth year hold any credit, and feeds on attention like a starving man offered morsels of bread.

However, after deducing that despite all of these obvious surface flaws, the finicky Draco Malfoy can still find the patience in himself to pursue an active, possibly even exclusive relationship with him, Blaise has found it himself to accept the companionship that the Slytherin and Gryffindor have formed. He has no time to be proud about this mature support, however, because he instead busies himself with attempting to magically persuade Draco to dismiss his obtrusive fortitude for a matter of nanoseconds to apologize to the hurting boy pressed up against him in a bathroom stall.

There is, however, no earnest apology. There is shuffling, in which both boys try to refrain any body parts from touching the others' despite the lack of space, and the furious unlocking of the stall as Draco fails to come up with a satisfactory response, or even a response at all, and Potter shoves past him.

"I should've known you were still too much of a git for this, Malfoy."

The stall door bangs open, swinging on its hinges, and Potter thunders out with an obvious determination not to peer over his shoulder to see if Draco is following him. Ten seconds later, Draco hurls his fist into the nearest wall, lets out a string of foul curses in the wake of his pain, and storms out of the bathroom as well with a freshly battered set of knuckles held up to his chest in protection out of more self-inflicted harm.

They both dash out so quickly that Blaise doesn't even have to duck behind the nearest sink to conceal himself and his eavesdropping habits.

O O O O O

Four days later, Harry and Draco are still fighting.

Blaise can tell because Draco is pitifully pining.

Pansy is convinced he's mooning over the rumors that Daphne Greengrass started circulating that Pansy tried to urge Theo to third base during the drunken pandemonium that was the post-game party Draco conveniently missed to deliver Potter a blowjob, constantly cooing sugary nonsense at him and stroking his forearm, now thickly wrapped up to the knuckles to ensure no further attempts at punching Hogwarts drywall by Madam Pomfrey. Goyle is friendly enough to try to nurse Draco out of his mystery grumpiness by wafting platters of dessert he would normally hoard onto his platter himself under his nostrils. Astoria Greengrass tried approaching him in the common room to suggest a stroll together through the streets of Hogsmeade for the forthcoming visit to cheer him up, a proposal that only incensed Draco further and caused him to hurl a pillow at her head.

Blaise, however, knows better than to guess wildly at Draco's enigmatic crisis and wave silly distractions under his nose to cheer up his spirits, a challenge Pansy is constantly leaping to accept.

In all candor, he's amazed. Draco, a boy who has mocked couples and displays of affection in the corridors since the first year that Blaise has known him, claiming love to be a petty, foolish pastime that would only serve as a hindrance to Draco's heinous plans to ascend to greatness in his family, is genuinely depressed over losing his boyfriend over a silly feud. Pansy, who has always shown a superb amount of cleavage in Draco's presence and purred about how silky his hair was since third year, was always met with Stinging Hexes and borderline uncouth refusals to indulge in her silly fixation. Blaise had always been certain that Draco, no matter how much he wanked in the shower, never had an interest in a strong commitment to another person as desperately as his classmates did.

Up until Potter.

Blaise sighs from his position on his bed, staring up at the dusty ceiling meeting his eyes. Beside him, Draco continuously feels the need to huff aloud in the sulkiest manner he can manage his lungs to produce. It seems that _up until Harry Potter_, all had been peaceful in the world, especially in Draco Malfoy's. Most recently, Blaise's universe has also been cruelly warped into this Potter-related madness without his permission.

He turns on his sheets, catching sight of the dark shape of a boy with his arms crossed over his chest even while preparing for the arms of slumber to pull him into what surely could only be an irate sleep, and fumbles for his wand.

"_Lumos_," Blaise hisses, and takes a moment to pray that this won't turn into a therapeutic sleepover that the girls' dormitory is popular for, "Draco, stop it."

Light shining directly at his face, Draco hisses and tries to shield his eyes, writhing on his bedspread and succeeding in only entangling himself in the clutches of his sheets, pooling around his midsection. From in between the cracks of his fingers, Draco glares at him.

"Turn that bloody light off, Zabini, I'm trying to sleep."

"No, you're not," Blaise says, with more patience than he believes his body contains, "you're brooding and feeling sorry for yourself. Stop it. Pansy is going to burst into tears tomorrow if you keep being so grouchy all the time."

"Not my problem," Draco says airily, arms resuming their earlier position over his chest after he smoothes out the bedraggled sheets.

"Draco, don't be such a _prat_, dammit," Blaise mutters. Goyle lets out a tremendous snore in the bed right of his own. He wishes he could cut this short. McGonagall has been eluding to a quiz over Animaguses tomorrow, a topic he hasn't spent much time researching and will need a healthy amount of sleep for to fully digest on paper in front of him with sheer luck, something he won't be receiving if Draco keeps him awake with his surplus of huffs. He wants to give up the routine of cautious treading and blurt out that he knows about Draco and Potter's currently rocky relationship and that if he's able to pull his head out of his arse long enough to let Potter shove his dick back in, a quick apology might still salvage their insane, insane relationship.

_Insane_, Blaise repeats again in his mind for good measure, because it is. He doesn't understand the dynamics behind it or how it even managed to survive and thrive up until now, let alone how its origin came to be born. He has many questions, questions he knows Draco will never answer, especially under the current circumstances of an intensely bad mood that only fuels his typical Malfoy temper. So, deciding to give up on discovering the logic behind this bizarre connection, Blaise returns to the task at hand of quelling a temperamental boy refusing to let him sleep in peace.

"Shove it, Blaise. I deal with my own problems."

"Right, because that always works out so well."

Draco turns to glare at him but is promptly halted by the bright beam of light still gleaming in his face. He swipes for Blaise's wand, too many inches short of grabbing it.

"Turn the sodding light off!" Draco snarls, resulting in another lengthy, grumbling snore from Goyle threatening to wake up the entire dorm. When Blaise keeps his ground and speechlessly challenges Draco to taste honesty on his tongue for once and admit what has been bothering him so terribly, Draco growls and yanks his hangings shut.

"Impossible," sighs Blaise, pushing his wand back to his nightstand, "_Nox_."

O O O O O

Blaise is, and has been for the past week, fatigued and cross. Draco huffs on a nightly basis, to the steady annoyance of Blaise, who's starting to believe that Draco orchestrates such performances simply to be snide to Blaise for prying in his business. Pansy has stopped trying to enlighten Draco's spirits, instead opting to sit a healthy distance away from him at breakfast, lunch, and also dinner. Theo has joined her on the edge of the table, which encouraged Goyle and a handful of other Slytherins upon hearing that Draco Malfoy will cast a Jelly-Brain Jinx to the next naïve fool who tries to start a discussion with him.

It's snowballed a little out of control, Blaise thinks, while pressing his thumbs to his temples and attempting to soothe the throbbing behind his eyes. He doesn't know how it came to happen, but Harry Potter has, possibly without awareness, cursed ruin upon Slytherin house. Technically, Blaise knows Draco is the true culprit behind it all, his inability to mature and apologize only being part of it, the other half revolving around his innate talent to release all of the wrath of his bad temper out on his peers.

Blaise's high cheekbones are not so high anymore after a few days of interrupted nights. Draco is a _menace_keen on taking down anyone fighting for optimism down into his hole of doom and gloom.

On this highly disturbing note, Blaise decides that, Slytherin as he is, he will take drastic measures in the form of sneaking behind Draco's back to seek out Potter and demand him to put a stop to all of this rubbish.

He knows that marching over to the Gryffindor table during lunchtime and bodily pulling Potter from his seat by his ear to get his full attention might be too obvious to not only Draco, but the entire school, so he goes for a more sagacious method that involves stalking the corridors before lessons begin in the hope to catch Potter chattering with his friends in the hallways.

He's wandering down the Charms corridor and skirting by a hollering Peeves singing obscenities when he realizes that perhaps he was a little too late in his ingenious plan.

The boisterous sound of shouting and even a few curses flying and bodies slamming against walls fills his ears before he can round the next corner. Blaise stumbles to a halt, pulls out his wand, and peeks over the edge of the wall.

Stuck in a heated argument that appears to be escalating thanks to Draco's ever-present fury, Potter and Draco are head-to-head in a yelling match that is noisy enough to rouse the entire population of Hogwarts from their dwellings and classrooms to watch what mayhem is occurring in the middle of an empty hallway. Draco's wand is drawn and firing off showers of cantankerous sparks every time Potter tries to get out a word, magic that Blaise is positive is actually unintentional, when Potter seems to take the reins of the situation and slams Draco up against the nearest wall with enough force to cause the nearest suit of armor to quiver.

"Just stop, Malfoy, _stop_for a moment!" Harry growls against a successfully pinned Draco, who from the angle that Blaise is witnessing the entire chaos from, isn't ready to relinquish control without thrashing a few limbs.

"Potter, let me go!"

"Just _listen_!" Potter tries again, and Blaise feels like applauding him from the sidelines for his patience, "Why do you always have to make everything so bloody complicated, Draco?"

"Don't know what you're––"

"I suppose that's what I get for starting up something with a Slytherin. And you of all people, too."

The fight ultimately leaves Draco until his legs stop writhing for freedom and only give feeble twitches of protest at his position of submission. Blaise expects that once Draco catches his breath again, there will be a full-on tousle for dominance and perhaps even a display of Muggle fighting with fists and kicking and all, but the altercation is finished. When Blaise blinks and opens his eyes, he sees Draco's arms wrapped securely around Potter's neck to twine in his mop of disheveled hair and Potter's hands resting on the small of Draco's back to press himself even closer to the other boy, mouths fused together and tongues searching each other out urgently.

It's the most ridiculous, cinema-worthy thing Blaise has ever seen. He almost wishes he owns a camera so he can hang this moment up over Draco's bed to at least pull a few chuckles of mirth from this petrifying experience, but Blaise's pockets are inconveniently empty. He very clearly recalls the two of them shouting at each other, in no state of mind to snog, a mere two minutes earlier, Draco hissing threats and Potter about to bring his own wand into the duel. With a hand back on his temples, Blaise fruitlessly wonders how this happened.

Draco, evidently no longer minding that he isn't dominating over Potter, hoists a leg over Potter's waist and bucks his hips. A loud groan penetrates the air, already smelling of the stink of debauchery in the halls that will have Filch grumbling and mopping for a few hours, and Blaise decides that McGonagall catching two boys rutting against each other in the corridors is a sweeter thought than Blaise having the satisfaction of prying them apart.

O O O O O

The air in the common room is perceptively less tense the morning after the reunion no one but Blaise and a suit of armor had the pleasure to witness.

Two second years in the corner resume playing Exploding Snap at the sight of Draco smirking and swaggering around the common room without bellowing at anyone for making too much of a racket. Pansy is busy befriending Hufflepuffs to try and get one of them to sneak into the kitchens for her and convince the house elves to fork over a hefty load of firewhiskey. Draco has claimed possession over the entire couch, sprawled over each cushion like a regal cat purring on its owner. And Blaise, for once, is enjoying a peaceful evening of doing nothing at all in the armchair next to him.

"By the way, Blaise," Draco drawls from the sofa, lifting his head, "I've been meaning to apologize if I've been a bit cross lately."

Blaise smirks, "You've been a bit cross, have you?"

He shrugs and stretches his arms to rest behind his head, "Pansy told me I was being a nightmare," he says, "I thought it was just Pansy being Pansy until I noticed that half the table doesn't sit with me anymore."

"Rumor has it you are quite the guru at jinxes," Blaise tells him. Draco draws out his wand and plays with it between his fingers, causing a few pieces from a chess game a fourth year is playing across the room to levitate and bob around. The fourth year shrieks and rockets up from the table. Draco grins at his accomplishment of frightening at least one student a day and Blaise almost lets out a breath of relief at the sight of Draco back to normal.

"I probably am," Draco says and sits up on the sofa, glancing at Blaise, "I noticed you didn't leave my table, though."

"No, I didn't."

"You weren't stupid enough to talk to me, but you were still there," Draco shifts on a cushion. He opens his mouth and after a few seconds of silence, closes it again.

"You keep that up, people are going to think your mouth is a rubbish bin, Draco," Blaise says, and chances another look at his friend. He knows what he's trying to do, even if he never in centuries to come would have assumed that Draco would be advanced enough in his adulthood to admit that a thank you was in order, instead remaining forever stuck as a fifteen-year-old boy that whines to his father about a paper cut.

He's grown, Blaise realizes, and not just because the years have ticked by. The war beginning pushed him into a grim corner, and the war ending pulled him back out as a person with a smidgen less sarcasm and thirst to prove himself, using whatever tactics might arise in the opportunity. He's still a pain in Blaise's hindquarters, and still won't miss a beat to toss an insult out into the open about the Weasleys, and is still rather narcissistic when it comes to who is allowed to hog the boys' dormitory bathroom in the morning. But he's grown, apparently grown enough to reduce himself to the level of sniggering with Potter in Potions and leaving possessive spots on his neck in broom cupboards instead of teasing him for his lack of parental guidance or what team of the war he fought for.

They're not the same smarmy, bumbling first years they were years ago. Blaise doesn't know whether to be nostalgic about their transformations or thank the heavens that those years are behind him.

"I… well," Draco tries, the slightest of pink tinges of embarrassment noticeable on his cheeks.

"Not a big deal," Blaise dismisses, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

But even with the obligatory _thanks for being my friend_out of the way, Draco still looks irked. His eyebrows knot together and his smile takes a u-turn.

"There's something you should know, by the way," Draco says slowly, suddenly quite interested in the state of his fingernails.

"Oh?"

"I don't mean to sound like Pansy here," he begins, still sounding squeamish, and stares pointedly at a blemish of dirt smeared over the side of Blaise's shoe, "but I've been... er. Quite busy snogging someone for the past few months."

"I'm sure you've been doing it wrong, but I have no desire to help you with that."

"Shut your mouth, Zabini," says Draco, "and we haven't just been snogging, we've been shagging like bowtruckles too. And if I'd be any more of a Hufflepuff I'd start confessing my deep, crazy love."

"Better not tell Pansy that you're in love," Blaise says as Draco rubs the back of his neck with a startling lack of fortitude, as if this entire conversation is a prickly itch that he's been meaning to scratch for weeks but is too humiliated to do in the public eye, "she'll pitch herself off into the lake."

"You have to be a prat about this, don't you?" Draco spits, flinging himself back down onto his cushions, "It's Potter, all right? I've been snogging Harry sodding Potter and you have to deal with it."

Draco lets out an enormous breath, as if the secret has been suffocating him alive, and Blaise pats his ankle gingerly as mollification. He takes a moment to let Draco sink into the pillows and steep in the drama of it all before, with a smirk, he says:

"I had no idea."

_A/N_: I love Blaise Zabini. I was reading through Half-Blood Prince and found the scene where Harry and him refuse to acknowledge each other in the Slug Club in Slughorn's compartment on "the principle of being a Slytherin and a Gryffindor" and fell in love with him all over again. I can't help but adore him. Everyone enjoy! :D


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